Parents these days get no respect

For some reason, right now, there is a whole cottage industry of media figures dedicated to diagnosing pathologies in modern parents.

Parents, the upshot is always, are hopelessly selfish, entitled and stupid. Sometimes ridiculous, the article will go to great lengths to point out.

Anya Kemenetz just produced a classic of the genre. The headline, in New York Magazine, is about “The grand tradition” of WEALTHY, WHITE parents “suing New York Public Schools.”

I’m paywalled from this article (but familiar with her work). Anyway, the NOT AT ALL SUBTLE suggestion is that parents of kids with disabilities in New York are big selfish liars (or something) for demanding disability accommodations for their kids in public schools. (Which is supposed to be an entitlement.)

It couldn’t be, for example, that the institution — New York Public Schools — is failing to live up to its obligations to kids with disabilities and only rich parents have the means to fight back. Parents, you see, are the villains in this story.

We are primed for this, I think a little. We’ve seen this movie before. Anya is one of the journalists who frequently dunks on wealthy “white parents” despite being a white (!) Brooklyn dweller herself (one of the good ones, see!) That is common to the genre.

Sometimes it’s ALL PARENTS who are stupid and horrible to be trusted. Freddie Deboer produced another gem of an example recently. The problems plaguing public schools right now, he says, are due to a “vicious” right wing anti public school propaganda cycle.” (Nothing to see here, you see!) And that’s why parents are pulling their kids out of public school. The institution can never be to blame, here. Only parents, who are ROTTEN TO THE CORE, objects of scorn.

Observe the way parents are treated in this article. Deboer says: “Parents, credulous towards this propaganda and often already looking for excuses to separate their children from poor kids and students of color…”

Parents are always white, always rich, which reflects more on the writer’s socioeconomic status than anything about the real position of “parents” in general right now. Notice how the construction of the sentence starts off with “parents", a category that includes people of all races, but as it continues, he is really only talking about white parents.

Can you imagine some reporter lecturing Jack and Norma Arnold about their concerns? They would have never!

We saw this flavor of reporting a little too, with a widely-shared Atlantic article about the share of kids at elite colleges who receive disability accommodations. The article quotes an unnamed “tenured professor” who attributes the whole trend — most of the accommodations are for ADHD, anxiety or depression — to “rich kids getting extra time on tests.”

I thought Laura McKenna’s response to this article was the best. Laura is a mom of a disabled kid herself, a kid with autism, who helps other parents fight for disability accommodations when they are denied them, which happens routinely.

She writes:

Why are so many kids crippled with mental health issues? Organized sports, COVID, and cellphones. We conducted a massive, unregulated experiment on young people. When they were young, we removed them from free interactions with peers and overregulated their lives with youth soccer and gymnastic leagues. Then we totally shut down their lives for a year and a half. We gave them devices to lobotomize them. Our schools became performative shams. We parents looked at our phones and didn’t interact with them.

We have totally fucked up a generation.

This to me is closer to the truth. Instead of indicting PARENTS, we’re indicting the wider economy of choices parents are operating in, society overall isn’t showing up for families and kids.

This DOES lead to some ridiculous outcomes — giant carlines and $10,000 youth travel sports — but it is the wider economy of choices, and how they have become “enshittified” and privatized for profits that is to blame, not parents imo.

Parents who try to help their kids, struggle to get them accommodated, are doing what is expected of them! They are putting these kids on their backs, when it’s the wider culture that is supposed to be doing that to some degree.

Parents, I think, are smart. Parents have VERY, VERY GOOD insights about what is wrong with public schools, if you ask them. Parents, the lack of respect for their concerns, is one of the big problems with public education and why more and more of them are headed for the door, imo.

Here’s an example. I love this. Randi Weingarten, United Federation of Teachers, made a big statement against AI and screens in classrooms last week. She’s right. It’s bad!

But God, I love this woman.

You know who could have told you all this tech stuff was TERRIBLE three, four or five years ago?! Parents! We talk about it all the time! My public school district sent my PRE-SCHOOLER home with a laptop a few years ago I SHIT YOU NOT.

She couldn’t read!!! How is she supposed to use a laptop!? I was like, “NO THANK YOU!” “I don’t want this. Take it back!”

Parents like me who could have been a voice of reason just were not listened to. Parents KNEW this was nonsense from day 1. We were forced to go through the motions and pretend for a few years, until all the “serious people” caught up. And a lot of damage was done in the meantime.